Excerpted from Wisconsin State Journal
By Judy Newman

A unified effort to boost the economy of the eight-county Madison region is starting to make headway, but there’s still a long way to go to diversify the workforce, speakers told a conference on Friday.

The first Madison Region’s Economic Development, Diversity and Leadership Summit — a combined effort of the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) and the Urban League of Greater Madison — drew about 400 people to Monona Terrace for the daylong event.

In his State of the Region report, MadREP president Paul Jadin said an email blitz and a series of meetings with site selectors — consultants who help companies choose locations for new and expanding businesses — have resulted in 26 inquiries about potential sites in the past year, “a significant increase over years prior.”

A dozen site selectors have been invited to tour the region in October “and watch the Badgers destroy Illinois,” Jadin said of the football matchup. “We need to do everything in our power to avoid being eliminated” from business siting opportunities, he said.

One of the biggest projects MadREP has worked on in the past year has been to apply for a federal program designed to accelerate manufacturing jobs. Called the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership, 12 regions across the U.S. will be chosen for extra access to federal resources.

MadREP chose the agriculture, food and beverage sector and submitted a 45-page application in April pitching the 13 counties in south-central and southwest Wisconsin for their history in the dairy industry and their strength in organic farming and in producing local and sustainable foods.

The federal designation could help with as many as 42 projects, ranging from establishing a Madison Public Market to installing biodigesters for small farmers to improving rail facilities, the application says. Total cost of the projects: $217.6 million, with the potential of creating more than 1,800 jobs.

MadREP covers Dane, Rock, Green, Iowa, Sauk, Columbia, Dodge and Jefferson counties. Southwest Wisconsin counties of Grant, Crawford, Lafayette, Richland and Vernon counties are included in the federal application.

Jadin said MadREP is working to get more minority and young professional people on local boards and committees, and to improve education and training. As many as 25 percent of the region’s African-American population is unemployed, even though the area’s overall jobless rate is 5.7 percent, he said.

“We’d better make sure that population is ready to accept those roles that companies have for them,” Jadin said. “The workforce is there; let’s make sure we’re preparing them.”

One keynote speaker for the summit, Ken Salazar, applauded the regional moves to encourage diversity.

“Your diversity will be something that will strengthen the community,” said Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado and U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 2009 to 2013.

At the morning keynote, author and economic trends expert Joel Kotkin briefed attendees on how Madison measured up with other municipalities in the competition for more high-skilled jobs and workers.

And it was largely good news.

Kotkin, a professor of urban studies in Orange, California, said Madison’s amenities, its lakes and neighborhoods, restaurants and shops, plus its lower cost of living and growing base of high-skilled, STEM-related jobs — short for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — gave it distinct advantages over similar coastal cities.

“It is the whole package that makes Madison attractive,” said Kotkin, who writes a weekly column for Forbes.com and edits the website newgeography.com. “San Francisco has more dogs than kids. Unless you are very wealthy, you cannot afford to have children in San Francisco.”

Kotkin also cited encouraging statistics, which put Madison at or near the top nationally on economic measures such as STEM-employment growth between 2001 and 2013. At 26.7 percent, Madison grew STEM jobs faster than the Minneapolis area, which saw a 2.1 percent rise, and far better than New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, which saw drops of 4.7 percent, 6.1 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively, Kotkin said.

“You have an opportunity to really move forward,” he said, putting Madison in a group of attractive but affordable and growing mid-sized cities such as Nashville, Tennessee, and Fargo, North Dakota.

“These smaller cities are really well positioned now,” he added, to see continuing growth and to lure more skilled young people from the Millennial generation as they become older and start wanting to raise families.

But to remain strong, Kotkin said, Madison and other cities also need to provide more opportunity for low- and middle-income workers who have increasingly been shut out of the nation’s economic gains since the 1970s. He said ideas to help create a “more expansive and more inclusive” economic recovery included more investment in on-the-job training and in two-year colleges aimed at graduating students with “technical skills that will lead to more upward mobility.”

Maria L. Campbell — who owns Maria L. Campbell & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in executive leadership development, training and lecturing on diversity and inclusion as a key driver for business growth and empowerment — was the day’s final keynote speaker.

She noted that companies benefit from implementing diversity and inclusion practices not only financially but also by being able to attract talented employees.

However, Campbell said, implementing diversity and inclusion practices at a business isn’t just the responsibility of a program leader – it is the responsibility of everyone from corporate-level employees on down.

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Excerpted from Wisconsin State Journal
By Bob Van Enkenvoort

Former U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is among three high-profile keynote speakers to participate when two local organizations hold a first-ever joint summit in Madison.

Advancing Talent, Opportunity and Prosperity: The Madison Region’s Economic Development, Diversity and Leadership Summit combines Madison Region Economic Partnership’s annual State of the Madison Region Summit and the Urban League of Greater Madison’s Workplace Diversity and Leadership Summit.

The summit’s goal is to bring the public and private sectors together on economic development, diversity and leadership-related issues.

The two other keynote speakers to be featured are: Joel Kotkin, a respected author and an internationally recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends; and Maria Campbell, who held a 28-year tenure as corporate director of diversity for SC Johnson, and is now a consultant providing executive leadership development, training and lecturing on diversity and inclusion as a key driver for business growth and empowerment.

MadREP President Paul Jadin said headline speakers were sought to drive attendance and provoke thought.

“Joel Kotkin is an individual that can certainly address the whole issue of economic development and the fact that the communities that are succeeding are also succeeding at coming to grips with diversity and leveraging diversity to benefit their economy,” Jadin said.

Campbell, Jadin noted, has vast experience with best practices in diversity and leadership.

To find out more about the summit and its speakers, go to www.advancesummit.com.

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Excerpted from Janesville Gazette/Walworth County Today

Thermodata, an international corporation with clients on every continent, has moved its world headquarters to the Innovation Center at Whitewater University Technology Park.

The company develops and markets temperature-monitoring systems for a wide range of industries, including health care, food service, scientific research and public health.

“I am pleased to welcome Thermodata to the Innovation Center and to a growing community of technology companies in the area,” said Richard Telfer, UW-Whitewater chancellor. “With only one unoccupied suite left, it is clear that entrepreneurs see the Innovation Center as an ideal place to start and grow their businesses.”

Founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2001, Thermodata opened an office in Boston in 2010, and relocated to Wisconsin in April.

“We are excited to move to the Midwest and specifically Whitewater,” said Jenny Samfat, co-owner of Thermodata. “The work ethic of the people here reminds us of home, where people love to tinker, to make things. We are looking forward to collaborating with other tenants on research and development.

Robert Keith, founder and co-owner of Thermodata, called the Innovation Center a strategic location.

“We are now in the heart of the country – and we’ll be able to get the supplies and equipment we need in the quantities we need,” he said. “We share other tenants’ desire to use the most up-to-date technology to serve our clients.”

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Excerpted from Baraboo News Republic
By Ben Bromley

A need for trained workers has Baraboo manufacturers and schools working together to promote technical education programs.

Teel Plastics, Synergy Metalworks and Flambeau, Inc. recently partnered with Baraboo School District’s tech ed department in seeking a $150,000 state grant to upgrade technology in local classrooms. On Friday, those manufacturers welcomed 35 high school students for tours to stimulate interest in industrial careers.

Todd Spencer, Flambeau’s chief administrative officer, said many longtime employees at the company’s plastics plants are nearing retirement. Manufacturers need an influx of prospective employees who have undergone quality training on up-to-date equipment.

“We’ve got to fill up the pipeline,” Spencer said. “We’ve got to replace them or we’ve got to outsource it.”

Local industries and educators hope to land a grant through the state Fast Forward Program. In addition to buying new technology for the schools, the partners plan to establish youth apprenticeships that will both strengthen tech ed programs and yield ready-to-hire workers.

This partnership between the schools and the private sector was promoted by Mayor Mike Palm and has earned support from the Cooperative Educational Service Agency, MATC and the state Department of Workforce Development.

District Administrator Crystal Ritzenthaler said business leaders have provided feedback about the schools’ tech ed curriculum and input as to the kind of equipment needed to train qualified workers.

“The business partnerships have been phenomenal,” she said. “We all want the same thing: to educate our kids.”

Friday’s tours were designed to show students that working on a production floor doesn’t mean getting coated in grime. On the Flambeau tour they watched Baxter, a $39,000 robot, contribute to the construction of John Deere lawnmower parts.

“We’re getting kids in here to see this isn’t your grandpa or grandma’s, or your mom and dad’s, industry anymore,” Spencer said.

School programs need technology to keep up, from robotics to hydraulics to computer-aided design. In addition to improving technology in the classroom, Ritzenthaler said the public-private partnership will give students opportunities to work in the field, using the same tools professionals do.

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Excerpted from Janesville Gazette
By Jim Leute

Tom Eckert heard the same message from employers as president of a technical college in Washington state that he hears now as president of Blackhawk Technical College.

“It doesn’t matter how nice your parks are. Are you going to have the workers that can run my business?”

Leaving one industrialized area, Eckert arrived in Rock County in 2010 to find another that had been crippled in large part because of a devastating national recession.

Many companies that survived have done so because of newfound efficiencies and a conversion to what’s known as advanced manufacturing, generally defined as the use of technology to improve products and processes.

Eckert immediately recognized the need for Blackhawk to help connect local students and employers in the new manufacturing model.

The result is Blackhawk’s Advanced Manufacturing Center, the goal of which is to create a talent pipeline to local employers. The first phase will open this fall in a renovated Milton building that was the former home to ANGI Energy Systems.

The idea is to consolidate all of BTC’s manufacturing programs into a space that’s more than double what’s devoted to the programs at BTC’s central campus. The center will include new equipment, labs and classrooms that lend themselves to cross training among several disciplines.

It also will include an advanced program lab where students in different programs work together.

“The programs will get together and build something. The instructors will break it, and then the students will fix it and tear it down again,” Eckert said. “People in different disciplines have to work with others, and they’ll be able to do so at the new center.”

Eckert said the face of manufacturing is changing radically, and the need for highly trained technicians has never been greater. Blackhawk’s capacity is tapped out, and the new facility will not only provide more space, it also will deliver better-trained students to help fill the local workforce gap.

Eckert and others have said employers have expressed a critical need for more skilled workers in areas such as CNC, electro-mechanical, industrial maintenance mechanics and welding.

“The new center will look like modern manufacturing,” he said.

Garry Krause came to Blackhawk last year as the dean of advanced manufacturing and transportation. The new center in Milton quickly topped his list of priorities.

“It’s very exciting to be a part of this,” he said. “It’s all so very innovative.

“Too often, we end up with silos. Welders don’t necessarily understand the issues machinists face, and machinists don’t understand the things welders deal with. With this center, we can bring them together and create a much more flexible employee.”

Renovation of the Plumb Street facility is ongoing. Blackhawk expects to move its welding, CNC and industrial mechanic programs to the facility this fall. Automation, HVAC and mechanical design will follow in fall 2015.

When complete, the $12 million center will have more than 100,000 square feet in which the programs can work together to produce employees that Eckert said are in demand—both now and in the future. An anonymous donor has committed $600,000, and the remainder will come from operating budgets and bonding.

“We are working very closely with industry, and we will be on the cutting edge,” he said. “So many people think of manufacturing in the way it was in the 1970s.

“But so much has changed, and we think many of our students will pursue dual degrees because of the new center. Those are people employers need, and the pay is very good.”

Eckert said he has yet to hear a negative comment about the center.

“Our business partners are thrilled; Milton is very enthusiastic about getting the center up there, and our economic development people are bragging up the center wherever they go,” he said.

One of those business partners is United Alloy, the Janesville company that provides custom metal fabrication and powder coating services. Its products include diesel fuel tanks and generator frames.

The company, which is currently doubling the size of its plant, has historically been in search of welders.

Shannon Moe, the company’s human resources manager, said the new BTC facility will turn out better students.

She said the center’s state-of-the-art technology and equipment will allow students to learn more, in some cases even learning customized welds that local companies use.

“The ability for these students to learn multiple things is wonderful,” she said. “Any time you can pick up more skill sets, you’re a more rounded employee, and you can learn and grow with the company.”

James Otterstein, Rock County’s economic development director, is equally excited for the innovations the new center will provide.

There are several examples of consortiums, partnerships and other shared-facility training centers around the country, he said, but few share the Blackhawk model’s characteristics.

“Very few are equipped with the appropriate facility layout, integrated technology or the modern equipment necessary to create a value-added, integrated training environment,” he said.

Even fewer, he added, have the ability that Blackhawk will have to open its facility to area companies in need of prototyping, research and development or other testing.

“Efficiencies, productivity, quality, safety and cost-control standards—driven by continuous innovation and technology—are the premiums separating those firms that are struggling and those that are growing,” Otterstein said.

The center will be a showcase that ties directly into the recently launched Inspire Rock County program that connects middle and high school students with manufacturing careers, he said.

“It’s critical for younger people to think about higher education earlier,” Eckert said. “These young people, as well as those underemployed, need to look at the two- and four-year programs that are out there and decide where their passion leads them.

“The Advanced Manufacturing Center will be a wonderful option that we think will lead to a long-term solution.”

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